Sweet Return (7 page)

“I made sweet tea yesterday,” her mom answered. “It’s in the ’frigerator.”

Joanna went to the kitchen, wagging the Sonic sack with her.

“Be sure to wash that chicken crap off your hands,” her mother called behind her.

Lanita followed her into the kitchen, giggling. “So how’s the egg farm?”

Joanna turned on the water in the stainless steel sink for yet another hand washing. Since becoming a chicken owner, she had become obsessive about it. “It’s okay. Not as profitable as I’d like, though. I brought you a couple dozen eggs.”

“Oh, thanks.” Lanita leaned her backside against the counter edge and crossed her arms. “If you aren’t making money, I can’t believe you’re still doing this, Joanna. What a lot of work.”

Joanna grinned, tore off some sheets of paper towel and dried her hands. “Tell me about it.”

“Are you dating anyone now?”

Uh-oh
. That question usually meant Lanita had someone in mind for Joanna to date. Intending to block her big sister’s good intentions, she answered, “I’m through with men.”

Lanita made an exaggerated sigh. “I guess you might as well take that attitude. Who would you date in Hatlow, even if you wanted to? What happened to what’s his name from Lubbock?”

Joanna began to put away some of the dozens of items strewn over the countertop. “Scott Goodman? He moved to Fort Worth.”

“Did you break up with him?”

“You might say that.” Scott Goddman, a pharmaceutical salesman from Lubbock, was suave, good-looking and overcritical. Joanna had spent every weekend with him for six months, until she discovered he spent weekdays with someone else who lived in Lubbock.

“I didn’t like him dating someone in Lubbock while he was sleeping with me. I’m funny that way.”

Lanita sniggered. “It’s just as well. He’ll never be anything but a salesman. Some new guys have come in to help Darrell coach and—”

“Lanita, does Darrell think it’s part of his job description to force his unsuspecting staff to go out with his pitiful sister-in-law? That must be embarrassing.”

“That isn’t the way it is. They’re new in town. They don’t know anyone. You should enjoy the opportunity to get out and go somewhere.”

“Forget it, Sister. I’m not interested. I’ve got too much to do to put up with some demanding man. That let’s-get-acquainted dance is too much trouble. And I don’t even like football.”

Lanita heaved another sigh. “My God, Joanna. Have you looked in the mirror lately? You might still look great, but you’re thirty-five years old. You’re becoming an old maid.”

Joanna had heard herself referred as to an old maid so often, she felt as if it were tattooed across her forehead. The label had hurt her feelings when she had first heard it, but she had grown a hard shell and become immune to it.

Lanita was nearly a head shorter than Joanna. She’d had three kids and hadn’t lost extra pounds after any one of them. That and a soft office job put her on the pudgy side. Joanna wouldn’t hurt
her
feelings by mentioning any of that. But she did stop her task to give her sister an indignant glower. “I like who and what I am just fine, thank you.”

She turned to the cupboards, opened a door and found paper plates and large red plastic cups. Most people had some kind of china or pottery serving dishes in their cupboards, but not Alvadean Walsh. Joanna pulled down three of the paper plates.

“Let’s eat on real dishes,” Lanita said. “Me and the kids eat on paper plates all the time at home.”

“Mom decided dishes that have to be washed are too much trouble,” Joanna said.

Lanita frowned. “She’s got a dishwasher.”

Instead of replying, Joanna reached for three plastic cups and lined them up on the counter.

For the first time, Lanita looked at the cupboard contents. “So now she just has paper plates and plastic cups?” Lanita’s voice was laced with puzzlement and indignation.

“Afraid so. But she does vary the colors and patterns.”

Lanita rolled her big green eyes. She and Joanna both had their daddy’s eyes. “This is ridiculous,” she snapped.

Joanna chuckled. “It’s her house, Sister. She can do what she wants.”

“I don’t care. It’s still ridiculous. I suppose we’re going to have to eat with plastic forks, too.” She yanked open the drawer where stainless-steel flatware had always been kept and found nothing but white plastic.

Now Joanna’s chuckle evolved into a laugh. She had grown accustomed to her mother’s latest effort to avoid keeping house. “Hey, you know Mom. You don’t live here, remember? And neither do I. To each his own.”

“Where do you suppose she put all of the dishes we used to have?” Lanita asked.

“I think she packed them up and put them in the storeroom out back.”

“Why didn’t she give them to me? Or to you?”

“Well, of all the things I need, Sister, a set of cheap dishes isn’t one of them.”

“Well, I could use them. I don’t even have a whole set anymore. The only ones I ever had were what I got as a wedding present, and the kids have broken half of those.”

“I guess you could ask her for them,” Joanna said. “It won’t hurt
my
feelings. And I think I’d be safe in betting a million she isn’t going to use them.”

Lanita shook her head, pursing her mouth and not attempting to hide her annoyance. “Oh, not today. I don’t want to start something. I see the house is practically sparkling. At least she hasn’t give up cleaning the house.”

“That isn’t entirely true, either. A Mexican woman named Lupe comes in on Saturdays and cleans. So you caught it at its best.”

Lanita set the plastic utensils on the counter with a clack. “Mom has a maid?”

“Yep. Every Saturday.”

“That really pisses me off,” Lanita snapped, her eyes wide with ire. “I don’t have a maid myself, and I’ve got three kids. Why, Darrell and I have been sending her a hundred dollars every month because we thought she was having a hard time.”

Joanna knew about the monthly stipend. In some conversation at some point, Mom had let it slip. “Hmm,” Joanna said. “I think that’s about what the maid costs her.”

“I can’t believe this. I don’t know if I should even tell Darrell. We’ve kept the kids from doing some things so we could send money down here.” With jerky movements, she picked out three sets of plastic forks and knives. “A maid. My God. Our daddy would turn over in his grave.”

“Lanita, chill out. It’s what she wants to do. I doubt if Daddy would care. I’m sure he didn’t marry her for her housekeeping skills. For that matter, I’ll bet Darrell wouldn’t care, either.”

Joanna unwrapped the burgers and fries and onion rings and placed them on the paper plates, squeezed puddles of ketchup onto each plate, then filled the plastic cups with ice.

“Don’t pour tea for me,” Lanita said when Joanna dragged the pitcher of tea from the refrigerator. “That sweet stuff has too much sugar. And too many calories. I’ll just have water and lemon.” She crossed to the refrigerator and looked in. “Well, there’s no food. I suppose it would be too much to hope she would have a lemon.”

“Yep,” Joanna said. “Too much. If you don’t want sweet tea, looks like your other choice is plain water.” Joanna left her sister in front of the refrigerator, dug a cookie sheet from a drawer under the oven and arranged the three servings on it.

“I’m glad I don’t live around here anymore,” Lanita groused, closing the refrigerator door. She leveled a hard glare at the cookie sheet. “My God. That’s not a tray. It’s a cookie sheet. You mean she
hasn’t
disposed of the cooking utensils?”

“Could happen any day, I suspect.” Joanna carried their lunch toward the living room on the cookie sheet. “Set up one of those TV trays for me, okay?”

Lanita complied, unfolding two metal TV trays in front of the sofa and one in front of their mother’s chair. Mom didn’t eat at the dining table, either. It was covered with assorted beads, baubles and tools for her jewelry-making hobby. Joanna distributed the food and drinks and they settled in to watch the rest of the movie while they ate.

“You usually eat out to Clova’s on Sunday,” her mother said.

“She’s gone to Lubbock Memorial to visit Lane,” Joanna replied.

“Humph.” Her mother took a bite of her burger. “Looks like he survived after all.”

“I heard about his car wreck,” Lanita said. “You know, I barely remember him from when we were kids.”

“Well,” Mom put in, “he
is
nine years younger than you are, Sister.”

“Mom,” Joanna said, “Dalton Parker didn’t call after I left the shop yesterday, did he?”

“Why would Dalton Parker be calling
you
?” Lanita asked pointedly.

“Because I asked him to. I left him a message about Clova and the ranch.”

Mom dabbed a French fry into ketchup. “You might as well forget that, Joanna. He ain’t gonna call.”

“What is the deal with him? All of a sudden, he’s like this phantom out there that everyone’s speculating about. Why wouldn’t he call and show some concern for his brother and his mother?”

“My God, Joanna,” Lanita said. “He probably hates his parents. Don’t you remember him when we were kids? How he used to come to school black and blue?”

Joanna thought back but couldn’t remember that about him. She couldn’t even clearly remember exactly how he looked. “I guess I don’t.” Then she couldn’t keep from giving her big sister an evil grin. “But then, I wasn’t close to him like you were.”

Lanita ducked the piercing look and dipped a French fry in the mound of ketchup on her plate. “If it was nowadays, the school would have to report parents who treated their kid like Dalton’s mother and stepdaddy treated him. And Child Services would take him away from them and put him in some foster home.”

“What I remember mostly is that everyone thought he was cute,” Joanna said.

“Oh, he was more than cute. He was sooo hot. He filled out a pair of Levi’s in
all
the right places, if you know what I mean.”

Joanna’s wicked thoughts flew to what Shari had told her that Megan Richardson had said about Lane. How could anyone not wonder if that physical characteristic ran in the family?

“Lanita, stop that kind of talk,” Mom said, continuing to mop up ketchup with an onion ring.

Joanna suppressed a grin as her memory zoomed back to 1987, when Lanita and Dalton Parker were seniors. Joanna was a sophomore and just starting to learn about boys and sex, mostly from Lanita. Her older sister had been a cheerleader, and Joanna could still see her leaping and cartwheeling in her short pleated skirt, her long blond curls unfurled and bouncing.

“I wonder what he looks like now,” Lanita went on, a distant look in her eye and a French fry poised in the air. “Me and every last one of my girlfriends used to practically cream in our jeans when he walked up the hall.”

“That’s vulgar,” Mom said. “Don’t be sayin’ stuff like that. Why, what if somebody heard you?”

Lanita’s full lips flattened. “It’s a joke, Mom. Who’s going to hear?”

Not liking hearing that someone she liked had been cruel to one of her children, Joanna said, “I can’t imagine Clova beating anybody up. She’s a gentle person.”

“Oh, I don’t think she whupped ’im herself,” Mom said. “She just didn’t do nothin’ to stop Earl from it.”

“I can’t see that happening, either,” Joanna said. “She treats Lane like he’s gold. You know what she’s put up with from him. And she never even raises her voice to him.”

“Joanna, you would o’ had to know Earl Cherry. That man was ornery as a mad bull. And poor little Dalton, bless his heart. Even when he was a little boy, Earl worked him like he was a grown man. With all that Comanche blood Clova’s got runnin’ in her veins, you’d o’ thought she’d o’ found the nerve to stand up for Dalton. But she didn’t. Lord, Earl had her cowed so bad, you’d o’ thought it was him that inherited that ranch ’stead o’ her.”

The three of them sat in silence for a few seconds, as if they each needed the extra time to digest Mom’s narrative. Then Mom added, “Course, if you’d o’ knowed Clova’s daddy, you might understand why she was like that. Wilburn Parker was a stern man who lived in another time. When Clova got pregnant, he yanked her out o’ school and hid her away and nobody even saw her anymore. She didn’t even go to the hospital to have Dalton. He was a big kid and walkin’ before she brought him out in public.”

Knowing Clova as she did, Joanna could imagine all of that. And it made her heart hurt for Clova, who for all practical purposes had to be viewed as an emotional cripple.

“Dalton was the loneliest boy I ever dated,” Lanita said, her legs tucked under her as she studied her fingernails pensively. “Even though I was only eighteen, I could tell he carried a hurt. But it wasn’t caused by some girl. It was from something deeper than that. My goodness, he could have had any girl he wanted. We were all the same. We wanted to take care of him.” She sent Joanna a mischievous look from beneath her brow. “Well, I might have wanted to do more than that.”

Mom frowned and sputtered. “Lanita Marie! I told you not to talk like that in my house!”

“Mom, good grief! Do you think I don’t know anything about sex? How do you think I got three kids?”

“That’s different. Why, what if Darrell heard you say somethin’ like that?”

Joanna turned her head and grinned. Her memory took her back to a conversation she and Lanita had had one day after Lanita had married and had kids and the two of them were in the kitchen doing dishes and talking. Joanna had asked her if she had fooled around with Dalton in high school. Lanita told her no. She would have, she said, but Dalton believed she was a virgin and he wouldn’t. Joanna had always thought that odd, and the conversation stuck in her memory for some reason. She couldn’t decide whom it said the most about, her sister or Dalton Parker.

Mom dredged another onion ring through ketchup and popped the whole thing in her mouth. “Ever’body said Earl was mean to Dalton ’cause Dalton wasn’t his, but I say Earl was just mean, period.”

“Well, who
is
Dalton’s father?” Joanna asked, curious now.

“Nobody’s ever known,” Mom answered. “Best-kept secret in Hatlow. Some said it was a college boy from up at Tech. Others said it was Mason Jergens. But if it was, Clova’s daddy never done nothin’ about it. Prob’ly ’cause Mason was married.”